Last month, IBM made an announcement that put an end to any hope of an open source OS/2. Responding to requests from an online community that had previously collected 11,600 signatures in support of its cause, the company confirmed that they would not be releasing the source code of their OS/2 operating system. I used OS/2 as my main operating system for about four years, and unlike some former users, my reaction to the news sits somewhere between disinterest and relief.

What was OS/2?

OS/2 was a joint project between Microsoft and IBM to create a business class operating system. Their plan was that Microsoft Windows would be the consumer and small business operating system and OS/2 the system of choice for power users.

When Windows version 3 became a huge success, Microsoft decided to ditch Microsoft-IBM OS/2 and instead create a high-end version of Windows called Windows NT. In addition to NT, they would continue a low end version of Windows in parallel to NT. From that point onwards, IBM continued the development of OS/2.

Thanks to Microsoft's genuine acumen combined with their signature ruthless business approach, Windows was soon installed as the default operating system on the majority of brand new PCs.

However, OS/2 lead the way in terms of technology. In 1992 IBM released version 2.0 of OS/2, now a full 32 bit multitasking operating system with many innovative GUI features. Windows NT arrived a year later, and when it did arrive, it was arguably inferior to OS/2.

Each new release of OS/2 brought with it new leaps in technological sophistication, but by the late 90s IBM had decided that competing in the same market space as Microsoft Windows wasn't worth bothering with and all but gave up on OS/2. As pulling the plug on OS/2 in a single move would have hurt the businesses who had invested in IBM operating system technology, IBM merely maintained OS/2 from that point onwards. For this reason, although the 1996 release of OS/2 version 4 had introduced new features such as speech recognition, native Java support and a port to the PowerPC architecture, subsequent releases were lacklustre, consisting of tweaks to the kernel and driver updates.

OS/2 still has a small but loyal enthusiast community surrounding it, and some members of that community have lobbied IBM to release the source code to OS/2. IBM have a reputation for playing nice with the open source community, and it would be difficult to attribute their decision to an unfriendly attitude to open source software development.

Why they
can't
release the source

At the present time, even if IBM wanted to release the OS/2 source code it would be unlawful for them to do so. This is because they are not the sole owners of every part OS/2. OS/2 started as a joint project between IBM and Microsoft; because OS/2 contains code that belongs to both parties, IBM would have to convince Microsoft to also agree to the release. Microsoft would never do this.

Also, it seems probable that other companies, such as Adobe, have some of their work embedded within OS/2.

This raises the possibility of a partial source release. Obviously, an incomplete version of the source code would be insufficient to allow programmers to build and then distribute a working version of OS/2. In such a case, programmers would have to expend effort in recreating the missing parts from scratch. This would be a lot of work.

Even a partial release would be a lot of work for IBM. There is probably almost no part of OS/2 that doesn't include at least
some
code that belongs to other parties. Sorting out which bits are clear for a release would involve a code audit of every single line of the huge OS/2 code base.

As much open source goodwill as IBM may have, doing it as a favour to open source community simply isn't on the cards.

"Most applications do not deal with disks directly, instead storing their data in files in a file system, which protects us from those scoundrel disks. After all, a key task of the file system is to ensure that the file system can always be recovered to a consistent state after an unplanned system crash (for example, a power failure). While a good file system will be able to beat the disks into submission, the required effort can be great and the reduced performance annoying.
This article examines
the shortcuts that disks take and the hoops that file systems must jump through to get the desired reliability."

"While Apple's technology is a 'very nice invention', the technique used in Android differs from the iOS solution, argued Bas Berghuis van Woortman, one of Samsung's lawyers. Because the Android based method is more hierarchical the system is more complex and therefore harder for developers to use, he said. [...]
Apple disagrees. 'They suggest that they have a lesser solution, but that is simply not true', said Apple's lawyer Theo Blomme to judge Peter Blok, who presided over a team of three judges, in a response to Samsung's claim." I just wish these companies and their lawyers could see and hear themselves. If only for a few seconds. Not even Monty Python could write this. By the way, all these patents were already thrown out last year by the Dutch courts, but Apple started a 'bottom procedure', a more thorough handling of the case. Three expert IP judges preside, and due to the earlier ruling, Apple is fighting an uphill battle.

"The smartphones going into the world's next two billion pairs of hands may not belong to either Google or Apple,
but to Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation, which oversees open source software projects like the Firefox Web browser, expects to release a mobile operating system for smartphones early next year. Its target market is Latin America, then the rest of the developing world, where smartphones from Apple and Google are still too expensive for most people." Let's hope so, because at the rate things are currently going, we'll end up with like 90% Android, 9% iOS, and 1% other stuff. Who wants that?

"In the six months since we launched Raspberry Pi, we've received a lot of feedback about the original board design. Over the next few weeks, we'll be gradually rolling out
a new revision 2.0 PCB
which incorporates some of the most popular suggestions." Also: manufactured in the UK.

"Android fans, especially those of you who love your Samsung devices, might have something to cheer about today as it looks like Chinese phone maker GooPhone have
already patented the design of the new iPhone 5
before Apple have had chance!" This is just... Wow.

Some
impressive new stuff
from Amazon today. Great hardware, good price points, and, unlike Nokia, Amazon opens up pre-orders right away and gives us shipping dates. Still, I would personally advice waiting with buying one until you can replace Amazon's Frankendroid with Cyanogenmod or something.

"This is an
introductory overview post for the Linux Graphics Stack, and how it currently all fits together. I initially wrote it for myself after having conversations with people like Owen Taylor, Ray Strode and Adam Jackson about this stack. I had to go back to them every month or so and learn the stuff from the ground up all over again, as I had forgotten every single piece. I asked them for a good high-level overview document so I could stop bothering them. They didn't know of any. I started this one. It has been reviewed by Adam Jackson and David Airlie, both of whom work on this exact stack." Introductory or no, still pretty detailed.

"During the 4th Semester of my studies I wrote a small 3d spaceship deathmatch shooter with the D-Programming language. It was created within 3 Months time and allows multiple players to play deathmatch over local area network. All of the code was written with a garbage collector in mind and made wide usage of the D standard library phobos. After the project was finished I noticed how much time is spend every frame for garbage collection, so I decided to create a version of the game
which does not use a GC, to improve performance."

"Imagine an approach to programming where you write down some description of what your code should do, then before running your code you run some automatic tool to see if the code matches the description. That's Test-driven development, you say! Actually, this is what you are doing when you use static types in most languages too. Types are a description of the code's inputs and outputs, and the check ensures that inputs and outputs match up and are used consistently. Modern type systems -
such as in Haskell or above
- are very flexible, and allow these descriptions to be quite detailed; plus they are not too obtrusive in use and often very helpful."

"Windows Server 2012 probably won't have the adoption lag in the enterprise that Windows 8 is bound to face. That's because, aside from the Metro GUI, Server 2012's
biggest changes are in substance rather than style, building upon what the company delivered with Windows Server 2008 Release 2 three years ago. In particular, Server 2012 takes two management features Server 2008 R2 admins will be familiar with - Server Manager and PowerShell - and expands on them considerably."